CORA Roll Call: Kinky Gazpacho

I was over visiting and checking out the current CORA Diversity Roll Call over at the Color Online blog.

This week is covering food and memoirs so the first book to come to my mind was a memoir that I read last year.

Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love, and Spain by Lori L. Tharps was an intriguing memoir that raises lots of questions about race and identity. It’s a coming-of-age tale not only of the author’s journey into womanhood but also of her own preconceived notions of what it really means to be a woman of color.

The author was born in a sheltered middle-class life usually being the only person of color in her classrooms and neighborhoods. It is here in her teens years that she finds a love for the country of Spain. As she moves through her life to college, she finds it hard to fit in with people who though look like her, cannot relate to her. But then also feels the sting of not fitting in with friends outside of her race and culture.

When she fulfills her dream and travels to Spain, her idealizations of the country are challenged with the truths of how Spaniards relate to her difference. But it also where she meets Manuel, the man who would later become the love of her life and husband despite all of the obstacles and prejudices. There is also a bit of mystery where the author unravels a secret in the cultural roots of Spain. It is this historical part of this memoir that was most fascinating to me.

The memoir may affect people in many different ways—like most books. Some resonate more with some people than with others.

For me, this memoir was most of all a love story. The love that the author had for a country, the love she found in Manuel, and most of all the love the author found for herself.